1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a page information display method and apparatus, and in particular to a page information display method and apparatus for displaying electronic information in a unit of page of predetermined size.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, the information required for the work, study or life is provided from the origins of information to the reader, using media such as books, or periodical publications, e.g., newspaper or magazine. Also, the administrative or judicial information is provided in publications or documents.
In recent years, the Internet (Internetwork) has been well prepared to enable the computers for the government, company, college, and individual to be interconnected directly or via the telephone network. with the development of providing the information via the Internet, a variety of information is created as an ML page (e.g., HTML page or XML page) on the basis of make-up language, which allows this page (typically referred to as a home page) to be accessed using a computer. To provide the ML page, a large amount of documents are created in a PDF format, and can be downloaded from respective home pages. Just as the patent gazette is provided in CD-ROM, the important information may be publicized or circulated in the computer readable medium other than the Internet.
The information provided in a format viewable using a computer may include information contents from a wide variety of information sources covering data sheets of products manufactured by the company, the information of new products, documents created by the administration, pieces of legislation, the Supreme Court precedents, research results of the college laboratory, detailed information of lodgings in a certain region, news, weather forecasts, for example. These may be duplicately provided in other paper media such as newspaper columns, magazines, or catalogues, but simply provided through the Internet or in the computer readable medium. Most of the past information may be often difficult to obtain substantially in paper media.
As the information networks such as the Internet are prepared throughout the world in the future, more information will penetrate into the society increasingly. Thereby, it is apprehended that there occurs a personal difference in the amount or quality of necessary information between the user familiar with the computer and the user unfamiliar with the computer.
Means for operating the computer may be a graphical user interface (GUI, hereinafter referred to as a desktop metaphor) useful in most cases, which is metaphoric to the working environment of desk in the actual world. Through the user interface in the desktop metaphor, the working environment of desk is comically drawn to allow a file structure specific to the computer which is nonobjective and uneasy to understand to correspond with a file or folder present in the working environment of desk. Thus, the computer beginners can operate the computer intuitively. For example, to delete a file, the file indicated by an icon which is metaphoric to paper is drugged and dropped into a garbage box.
However, through use of the user interface of desktop metaphor, many people in the world may think that the simple operation of viewing electronic information in the computer is difficult. That is, through the user interface of desktop metaphor, it is required to view electronic information by instructing or operating indirectly a virtual device such as buttons drawn on the display of computer, a pop-up menu, or a slide bar, using an input device such as a mouse or keyboard for the computer,
In the conventional example as described above, there was a drawback that viewing of information through the use of a computer was difficult. That is to say the operation scheme specific to the computer may take considerable time to master the operation. Thus, everyone can not easily make use of the electronic information provided by the computer. Accordingly, there is a personal difference in the quality and amount of information available between the users. If many people feel it difficult to use the computer, the information provider can not abolish the paper media for the information necessary to be conveyed to entirely transfer to the electronic information.
For example, it was reported that when a large company introduced a computer system to do all business contacts and settlements of accounts by abolishing the paper media, the preparatory period was set to two years, and one year or more was dedicated to an education period for new staff members to get accustomed to the computer, so that the company fully succeeded in computerization. Some colleges provide computer literacy courses to educate the basic usage of computer. Generally, in the study and training of new staff members in the companies or government offices, the computer operation is educated. They are taught about not only viewing of the information, but also input and origination of the information. However, for the people who never have used the computer at all, it is a difficult work only to view the information.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a user interface which is intuitive and easy to operate, rather than a desktop metaphor. Particularly, an information viewing device which has a simple appearance and enables the operation intended to view the electronic information is promising.
To cope with such a problem, a prior viewing device which is an improved desktop metaphor was disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-165595. This realizes the appearance of a book on the display portion, and relies on a method of visualizing the electronic information on the display portion by outputting the overlapped pages composed of a plurality of sentences dislocated slightly to the display portion. A heading symbolizing a set of sentences is appended with the content of sentences as a unit of set to improve the desktop metaphor. However, in this conventional example, the amount of information to be displayed increases in proportion to an increase in the number of pages. Therefore, it is often difficult to secure the display area sufficiently. Consequently, there is a problem that the viewing area is reduced to make viewing difficult.
A CRT or a liquid crystal display is becoming higher in resolution year after year. For example, if the resolution of about 150 dpi in A4 size is realized, it is possible to view the whole one face of newspaper in A4 size. If the display has substantially a resolution of facsimile, the newspaper or magazine is made readable in a size which is smaller than the actual size. In such a high-resolution display, the display of 1200xc3x971600 dots can be made in A4 size. Therefore, the physical size becomes too small to be useful for the icon in the conventional operating system, giving an impression of something intricate to the user, possibly resulting in a user interface which is rather uneasy to understand.
Therefore, the development of a user interface in the next generation which can be intuitively used by the computer beginners as well is required. Then, it is desired to adopt a high-resolution display without changing the operation. In other words, it is desired to develop the user interface which is easy to master the operation and not dependent on the resolution.
It is an object of the present invention to resolve the inconveniences associated with the conventional example, and to provide a user interface for viewing the information which is easily understood by all people, irrespective of the computer experiences.
Therefore, the present invention adopts a user interface having a metaphor like a book, newspaper or magazine. To realize the metaphor of this book, the electronic information is allowed to view in a unit of page of predetermined size. That is, the electronic information is displayed in a unit of page of predetermined size in an information viewing area of a display portion. And there is only a single information viewing area and the page cannot be rolled physically, unlike books. But a user interface which is metaphoric to the operation of rolling the page enables the information viewing area to be effectively used. For a book or the like, it is possible to check the position of the current page relative to the total page in view of the thickness of sheets, when opened, or search for a content of the book on the page number roughly estimated. To facilitate the viewing operation of electronic information substantially in the information viewing area of one page which is metaphoric to using the book or the like, the present invention makes effective use of a tag. Due to the use of the tag, the user interface having the metaphor of book or the like is implemented, making it possible to increase the users for viewing the electronic information.
The present invention has a novel feature of altering the tag attributes such as a tag display area, overlapping of tags, length, width and position (height) of tag, in accordance with the total page number of electronic information and the page number of current page, as will be detailed later. Note that the user interface metaphoric to the operation of rolling the page will be disclosed in more detail in a separate application.
In a first group of inventions (claims 1 to 10), when the electronic information is a book or the like, a tag display area is provided on either end in a page rolling direction. With a tag of a page currently displayed as the boundary, a tag indicating each page preceding a current page is displayed in other display area, for example, a left display area, while a tag indicating each page succeeding the current page is displayed in one display area, for example, a right display area. Thus, though the electronic information of one page is simply displayed in an information viewing area, the user is prompt to recognize intuitively what amount the total page of electronic information is and to what extent the user has read by now or the current page.
The first invention is a page information display method for displaying electronic information using an information viewing device comprising a storage portion for storing electronic information having a plurality of pages in a unit of page of predetermined size, and a display portion having an information viewing area for displaying electronic information stored in said storage portion in a unit of said page, and a tag display area for displaying a tag indicating the content of said page, the tag display area being provided on either end of said information viewing area, the method including displaying a current page of current display object read from said storage portion in said information viewing area and displaying a tag appended to said current page in said one or the other tag display area, displaying a tag appended to each page following said current page in one tag display area before or after displaying said current page, and displaying a tag appended to each page preceding a page number of said current page in the other tag display area before or after displaying said current.
In displaying the current page in the information viewing area, a tag indicating the content of current page such as the page number is displayed in the tag display area. Subsequently, in displaying the succeeding page tag, a tag for calling each page succeeding the current page is displayed in the one tag display area provided in the information viewing area. On the other hand, in displaying the preceding page tag, a tag for each page preceding the current page or which has typically been already viewed is displayed in the other tag display area. Thus, in a pair of tag display areas between which the information viewing area is provided, a tag indicating each page already viewed and a tag indicating each page to be viewed from now on are displayed around the current page as the center. Therefore, the position of the page being currently viewed relative to the total page can.be informed to the user at a glance.
In a second group of inventions (claims 11 to 21), in starting viewing electronic information, the tag length is made variable in accordance with the total number of pages. It is desirable that a tag display area is provided on either end of a display portion, but the variable tag length makes the user interface more effective even with the tag indication in one tag display area. That is, the tag length appendant to the current page and each of the preceding and succeeding pages is determined depending on the total page number of electronic information and the physical length or the dot number of the tag display area. Thus, if a larger number of pages of electronic information is displayed, the tag length is shorter, and the number of tags is greater, than when a small number of pages of electronic information is displayed. Thus, the user can recognize the total page number at a glance. Also, the electronic information involving a large total number of pages may not be displayed with the same length of tag. In such a case, in a preferred embodiment of the second invention, the tag length of current page is maximum, and the tag length is set to be shorter as the page is closer to the start page or last page.
The second invention provides a page information display method for displaying electronic information using an information viewing device comprising a storage portion for storing electronic information having a plurality of pages in a unit of page of predetermined size, and a display portion having an information viewing area for displaying electronic information stored in said storage portion in a unit of said page, in which said display portion comprises a tag display area provided along with said information viewing area on one end or both ends in a page rolling direction to roll the page information in said information viewing area, the method including calculating the tag length of each tag appended to each page in a tag display direction on the basis of the length of tag display area in the tag display direction which is orthogonal to said page rolling direction and the total page number of electronic information stored in said storage portion, displaying the tag in said tag display area, on the basis of the length of each tag calculated in calculating said tag length, and displaying the page of current display object read in said information viewing area, before or after displaying the tag.
Since in calculating the tag length, the tag length of a tag appendant to each page is calculated in accordance with the total page number of electronic information and the length of tag display area, the amount of electronic information can be indicated visually.
In a third group of inventions (claims 22 to 29), when viewing electronic information of one page displayed in the information viewing area is stopped or interrupted, and the page is rolled to view another page, the tag is displayed again. The tag is transferred to one or the other display area while the height of tag displayed once is maintained, in accordance with the embodiment. Also, in a semantic display, it is preferred that the height of tag is recalculated in accordance with the page number of a new current page. Also, when it is desired to move the page by a great amount in the semantic display, the tag displayed in a line state is expanded. Also, a selection between the normal display for making redisplay of the tag with the fixed tag height or the semantic display for changing the tag height continuously may be made in accordance with the total page number of electronic information.
In a fourth group of inventions (claims 30 to 41), the page rolling operation is performed using the tag. Then, using a pointing device such as a fingertip, a pen, a touch panel, or a mouse, various page-rolling operations are implemented in accordance with the pointer event. For example, the page may be rolled on dragging the tag to display a lower page stepwise (e.g., a next page of the rolled page) When a tag is clicked, a page of the tag may be displayed. By rolling the pages consecutively, the operability may be further enhanced. For example, when a plurality of tags are dragged continuously, the pages are consecutively displayed from a page with tag at the drag start position to a page with tag at the drag end position.